Conflicting Narratives: War, Trauma, and Memory in Iraqi Culture

Included in this review is an examination of the important Iraqi war poetry from the time of the Iraq-Iran war to the conflicts of the 21st century.

“In the latter half of the twentieth century some of the Arab world’s most important poets emerged from the country; names like Badr Shakir al-Sayyab, Nazik al-Mala’ika, and ‘Abd al-Wahhab al-Bayati—among many others…. Yet far less has been written, particularly in English, about the writers and cultural figures from the final quarter of the last century until the present day….in December 2008 a conference entitled “Cultural Voices of a Fragmented Nation: War, Trauma and Remembrance in Contemporary Iraq” took place at the Phillips-Universität in Marburg, Germany. Much of <i>Conflicting Narratives: War, Trauma, and Memory in Iraqi Culture</i> grew from this conference….It is also perhaps the most comprehensive resource in English on Iraqi literature and other cultural productions from 1980 to 2010, a historically important period whose cultural legacy risks being overshadowed by the horrific events occurring in the country today. ”